


Dreaming of the Future

by celtic7irish



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dreamsharing, Five-and-One Fic, Gen, Time Skips, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 13:57:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20210896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celtic7irish/pseuds/celtic7irish
Summary: The Winter Soldier dreams sometimes.  Eventually, he realizes that he's not dreaming, so much as sharing someone else's dreams of a seemingly impossible future.





	1. DREAM ONE: A STARRY SKY

**Author's Note:**

> For Tony Stark Bingo Square A1: Dreamsharing

_I close my eyes and I can see_   
_The world that's waiting up for me_   
_That I call my own_   
_Through the dark, through the door_   
_Through where no one's been before_   
_But it feels like home_

-A Million Dreams, from The Greatest Showman Soundtrack

The first time the Soldier dreamed, that he could remember, he was staring at the stars. Or was that a ceiling? The pinpoints of light were spinning and whirling above him like a kaleidoscope, an almost dizzying display. It was beautiful, and the Soldier lost himself in it. Eventually, though, he realized that there was a pattern to the shapes, like somebody was manipulating them.

He was moving across the stars, stopping to examine nebulas and planets and meteors, even a black hole or two. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, buried under ice and programming, was a silent promise. _Some day, I will go and see it for myself._ The Soldier didn’t know where the thought came from, but the more practical side of him said that it was a pipe dream, beyond the reaches of even the most daring human.

_This is my dream, you don’t get a say!_ The other voice was back, echoing in the Soldier’s head. He thought perhaps it was the voice of a memory, of somebody that he had known from Before. And he found himself reluctant to argue the point any further. It was just a dream. It couldn’t hurt anybody, right?

Before the Soldier could consider the matter any further, he felt an awareness in the back of his mind that indicated he was waking up. The Winter Soldier was needed. Taking one last look at the galaxy still spinning around him, the Soldier sighed.

_Would that I could dream of the future forever._


	2. DREAM TWO: A HELPING HAND

It was years before the Soldier dreamed again, huddled in the corner of some dingy hovel in a country that he couldn’t pronounce the name of, waiting for his target to arrive. If the schedule was correct, he wouldn’t be passing through for another seven hours and twenty-three minutes, which meant that the Soldier had time to rest. He couldn’t call it sleeping, exactly, because he was aware of the exact positions of the rest of his team, and their murmured words were as clear as if they were talking normally, but it was a powered down version of the Soldier, meant to conserve his energy until it was needed.

Behind closed eyes, the Soldier blinked at the sight in front of him, then ignored it for the moment as he checked the room he was in. It appeared to be some kind of workshop - a garage, maybe? - with tools tossed haphazardly everywhere and computers running complicated algorithms on them, numbers and letter flashing past. The Soldier didn’t care about what the programs were supposed to do; it wasn’t relevant.

Satisfied that he was dreaming, the Soldier looked again at the thing in front of him, which hadn’t moved. He felt sluggish, more exhausted than he could remember being in….well, ever. Which wasn’t saying much. He realized that his right hand was shaking, from nerves or stress or despair, he didn’t know. He tried to forcefully still the trembling, but that just made it worse, and the Soldier surrendered.

“C’mon, work, you stupid piece of crap,” the Soldier muttered in another’s voice. Eyes swept over the treads that led to a solid base connected to a long, hinged arm with a claw on the end that was holding a camera. The Soldier had the feeling that he was being watched, but the...robot, he realized with sudden recognition...remained motionless.

“What am I doing wrong?” he muttered, code blurring in front of him. “I’m such an idiot, can’t even do this one thing right.” _Malfunction_, the Soldier thought, then laughed. “Yeah, I’m malfuctioning, all right.” A loud sigh. “And now I’m talking to myself. Fan-fucking-tastic.” A range of emotions made the Soldier’s vision blur; anger and frustration and something like self-loathing. The Soldier had the urge to touch his face, to see if there were tears, but he found he couldn’t move. At least, not by his own will.

A frission of fear shot through him, quickly suppressed. If he couldn’t move on his own, then he wasn’t supposed to. He was a tool, an Asset. He went where he was told, did as he was ordered, returned like a whipped dog for maintenance and to be put on standby until the next mission. Fear and sorrow and anger were signs that the Asset was malfunctioning, that the Soldier was displaying deviant behavior.

“God, why am I so stupid?!” He was staring at the arm again, his hand reaching out and touching. Was he really that tan? And where had that cut from? Surely it should be healed already. “Wow. I guess they were right, huh? I really am a dummy,” he sighed, then jerked back as the arm suddenly moved, lifting its head to stare at him quizzically. “Wait, what?” he asked, dumbfounded.

The bot made a low whirring sound, then rocked on its treads, the arm spinning around so the camera could look at everything before turning back to look at him. The Soldier was confused, and he frowned as the bot leaned closer, pressing against his chest like a puppy demanding attention. His eyes flicked towards the scrolling code, which had changed somehow. He stared at it, squinting, and then rocked back in surprise. “DUM-E?” he asked, turning to eye the bot suspiciously. The clawed arm perked up, and the bot tried to get closer, forcing the Soldier to scramble back lest he get run over by a couple hundred pounds of solid metal. “Seriously? That’s the identification you chose? Oh my god.”

Mortification warred with pride and excitement inside the Soldier, but eventually the giddiness overruled any latent embarrassment at a robot whose name was basically an insult. He’d figure out the anagram for it later, no problem. He smiled, the expression foreign and awkward on the Soldier’s face. “Hello there, DUM-E. My name is Tony.”


	3. DREAM THREE:  A LIGHT FOR THE WORLD

The Soldier was dreaming again, but this time, he recognized that it wasn’t his dream. He didn’t know who Tony was, or why he was seeing through Tony’s eyes, but at least it made a little more sense than the Soldier dreaming of things and places that he was certain he’d never done or visited.

The first thing he noticed was that everything hurt, his body battered and bruised. But the worst of it was the random jolts that shot through his chest, and the Soldier had the sudden urge to look down. But it wasn’t his body, so he could only stare at the hands in front of him. “I have very steady hands,” a voice reassured him from the side, and he nodded, hefting something heavy - a battery? - onto a table, wincing as it tugged at his chest. The Soldier realized with dawning horror that the battery was somehow _connected_ to Tony. A brief flare of panic shot through them, but the Soldier suppressed it. There was no time, not when they were so close to a solution that he could feel it.

On the table sat a bowl filled with some sort of red substance. Clay, perhaps. There was a very thin circle cut into the clay, and the Soldier realized it was a mold of some sort. For what, he had no idea, but that didn’t matter. Tony knew what it was for.

The two of them held their breath as another man - Yinsen, Tony’s mind supplied helpfully - poured a melted silver liquid into the mold while they watched. Tony very carefully picked up the solidified metal ring and examined it, satisfied that it was both thin enough and sturdy enough to do what he needed it to.

The next few hours were spent carefully constructing what looked to the Soldier like some sort of large circuit. Using the smallest tools the Soldier had ever seen, Tony used magnifying glasses to put together something sleek and beautiful. The Soldier was entranced, barely even noticing when Tony burned their fingers while soldering. Silver and copper melded together into a ring, and the Soldier could practically feel the power emanating from it. He was a bit unsure about the wisdom in using Palladium as a power source, but it appeared that there was little choice, given the items Tony had at his disposal. Mostly weapons, though none that the Soldier recognized personally. But they were just as elegant, if not as delicate, as what Tony was working on now with an urgency that bordered on obsessive.

When Tony finally charged his new creation - an arc reactor, he called it - the Soldier was entranced by the flickering blue glow. He could feel the device humming under his fingers, blue light making odd shapes against the stone walls all around him. It was, for lack of a better word, _beautiful_.

“What will it generate?” Yinsen asked the question softly, as if afraid to be overheard. The Soldier had slowly pieced together that they were prisoners of some sort, and that whoever held them wanted Tony to build something. Judging by the stubborn determination the Soldier could feel, he was building something, but not what they wanted. It was a dangerous game, he was playing.

“If my math’s right,” Tony said, eyes glued to the reactor, “and it always is, three gigajoules per second.” The Soldier didn’t know what that meant, but apparently Yinsen did.

“That could power your heart for fifty lifetimes,” he said, his tone awed.

“Yeah...or something big for fifteen minutes,” Tony countered, reaching over and grabbing a large pile of blueprints.

Just before the Soldier was pulled out the dream, he caught a glimpse of Tony’s next project.

_Amazing._


	4. DREAM FOUR: FLYING

The Soldier was hurt. He was vaguely aware that he was strapped down and under heavy sedation - to keep him from killing the scientists and doctors, not out of any kindness on the part of his handlers - while they cut into him, removing the Judas Bullets that had lodged inside his body and torn him up. The Soldier had never come across anything like that, and his healing ability was only driving them deeper into his body, rather than out. So...surgery. And then there would undoubtedly be punishment for the failed mission before the subsequent wipe and cryo as the Soldier was put once more on standby.

But right now, none of that was important. Even the pain seemed far away as the Soldier stared down at the ocean spread out below him, or up at the sky above him. He was flying. Not in a plane, and not exactly under his own power, either. There were numbers and biometrics flashing in his peripheral vision, and an unfamiliar, but much beloved voice, in his ear, feeding him information about the ocean’s temperature and the pull of the tide and the power output of the suit. The Soldier realized that this was Tony in an armor, like the one he had caught a glimpse of in the cave (Afghanistan, he had learned later, when his handlers had sent him to clean up Stane’s mess). But it was smaller, easier to control, and far more advanced than that suit had likely been.

The Soldier had the sudden urge to look at the armor, and a moment later, they were sweeping downwards, towards the ocean. The Soldier caught glimpses of the suit, brilliant red and gold, glittering like a star against the sunlit waves. It was sleek and powerful and _stunning_, and the Soldier’s breath caught in his throat as they angled upwards, heading towards the sky again.

What seemed like only moments later, the voice was reporting, _“Approaching Gulmira, sir.”_

“Thanks, Jarvis,” Tony said, his voice hard as heat signatures started appearing on the HUD in front of him, heights and distances of buildings. The display focused in on a pile of weapons. STARK INDUSTRIES. The name struck something in the Soldier, and sent a wave of guilt through him. Or maybe that was Tony. He didn’t know anymore.

The town was filled with hostages, the Soldier realized. Men with guns patrolled the streets, transporting caches of weapons, creating a stockpile. The Soldier wondered who they planned to attack, or if it even mattered to them.

Seconds later, the entire town descended into chaos. The armor that Tony wore used the same concussive technology that made it fly to attack, sending people into cars and buildings. Small rockets, no bigger than a hand grenade, blew up weapon stockpiles, creating much larger explosions. The armed men scattered like frightened children as Tony waged a one-man war on them all. Bullets pinged off his armor, scratching the paint job but not doing any serious damage.

The Soldier found himself reveling in the mayhem, for once sure of himself, of his mission here. He might just be along for the ride, but this time, there were no doubts. These were bad men, terrorizing innocent people. They deserved to be taken out. The violence and bloodshed sang in his veins - in their veins - and he realized that Tony, whoever he was, was more like him than he’d realized. Sure, he dreamed big, created things that nobody had even _thought_ of, yet, but he wasn’t one to just sit back and let other people fight his battles, either. He could fix this, and he _would_. And he’d sleep just fine afterwards.

As a red and gold gauntlet slammed through the wall of a house, a sharp pain in the Soldier’s side made him jerk in his restraints. The armored arm jerked, too, yanking a man _back through_ the wall, which hadn’t quite been Tony’s intent. “J, we need to fix that asap,” he murmured.

The Soldier pulled back, afraid that he might unintentionally cause another malfunction of the armor if he stayed. The pain was sudden and immediate, and the Soldier screamed, opening his eyes.

“Welcome back, _Soldat_. We have much to discuss.”


	5. DREAM FIVE: A CONVERSATION

The Soldier was dreaming again, looking through Tony’s eyes as the man drew amazing pictures in the air, clean lines and angles in the same stunning blue as the arc reactor spinning around him. And interspersed in them were flashes of news clips and written articles. Research, the Soldier surmised.

The Soldier felt curiosity, and amusement, and a sharp intelligence directed inwards. “Do you really exist?” Tony asked out loud. The Soldier startled; never, in all the times he’d visited Tony in his dreams, had the other man realized he was there. Or maybe he had, but had dismissed it as a part of his dreams, as the Soldier had. Until the battle of Gulmira.

Since then, the Soldier had seen Tony’s world a handful of times, some happy, some frightening, and some that generated so much sorrow that the Soldier was almost relieved when it ended.

“Can’t you talk? Or maybe I’m still just imagining it. But I’m pretty sure that surprise wasn’t mine. I mean, it could be, I suppose, but it’s not like I’ve done anything particularly surprising in the last few minutes. Just updating the armor. I’m on number forty-three, if you can believe it.”

The Soldier didn’t try and smother his curiosity. Most of the armors looked the same to him, but he knew they were different to Tony. Stronger or stealthier or faster or more advanced.

Tony chuckled. “Yeah, I guess they all do kinda look the same, even with different paint jobs. But every battle, every fight, every new alien invasion reveals another weakness, something that can be improved. I’m a futurist. I’m always looking to see what I can do better.”

_You are a brilliant man,_ the Soldier thought, because it was a fact. Whatever else Tony - Iron Man - might be, he was brilliant. But it had been a long time since the Soldier had ventured an opinion of his own - opinions were independent thoughts, which were aggressively discouraged among Hydra and always ended with a mind wipe. The Soldier did not like the mind wipes; they hurt, and they left the Soldier less. But he remembered Tony. He might not remember all the dreams they’d shared - some wipes were more brutal and thorough than others - but he still remembered Tony, remembered his thoughts, bright like the sun, plentiful like the stars.

“Well, of course,” Tony said, still talking to an empty room. “I’m a genius, after all.”

_“Sir? I apologize, but my sensors are unable to detect a presence other than your own.”_ That would be Jarvis, Tony’s AI, and Tony laughed.

“Yeah, sorry, J. Don’t worry, just talking to myself. Probably. Maybe.”

_“Sir?”_ Jarvis sounded concerned, and the Soldier realized that the AI was trying to determine if there was a threat that he couldn’t see. The Soldier felt a quick flash of guilt that he had made the AI worry, and a pang of sorrow that he’d never get to meet Jarvis, who was probably Tony’s greatest creation, even more than the Iron Man armor. Not that the Soldier would tell Tony that. It wasn’t any of his business.

Tony wasn’t looking at the dancing pictures anymore. Instead, he was staring down at his hands, strong and callused from hard work, small cars and shiny burn marks, things that the Soldier never had, not for long. “A million dreams,” he murmured lowly. The Soldier made an inquiring noise, and Tony smiled, shaking his head. “It’s nothing. Just something Jarvis - the original one - used to say. A million dreams, each one a tiny piece of the future, of the world that I could design. Will design.” Tony didn’t truly believe that, didn’t believe that he could change the world, but the Soldier knew differently. Maybe Tony couldn’t save everybody, couldn’t make the Earth a Utopia, but he’d saved so many, done so much with knowledge and technology that would reach well into the future, helping people even when Tony was no longer around.

The Soldier thought that perhaps, just maybe, Tony had saved him, too.

Tony sent a surge of warmth towards the Soldier, who curled into it, even as he felt the tug on his consciousness that meant he was being brought out of cryo. “Come find me some day, yeah?” Tony asked. “If only so I can prove to myself that I’m not going crazy.”

_Some day,_ the Soldier thought in agreement, even knowing that he might not be able to keep that promise. But it was something to hold onto, through the missions and the bloodshed and the wipes and the cold.

Some day.


	6. DREAM SIX: A DREAM COME TRUE

“This is amazin’, Tony,” Bucky said, staring around the room in wide-eyed wonder, though his attention was eventually arrested by the item in the center of the room, as it was meant to be.

The billionaire genius laughed self-consciously. “Yeah, well, Steve kinda spilled the beans,” he said, his grin widening when Bucky looked over to him in confusion. “Stark Expo? The Flying Car That Wasn’t?”

Bucky stared at Tony for a long moment while he cast around for the memory Steve had obviously been blabbing. Stark Expo. The night before he left for the service. Two pretty dames, one for him, one for Stevie, though he’d ended up ditching them both by the end of the night, neither one deserving of his attention, much less his best friend’s. Howard Stark, stunning dancing girls, and a car that…that flew. Well, hovered, really. And then crashed. A failure, but still more amazing than anything Bucky had ever seen before. He was pretty sure that even as the Soldier, a part of him had remembered that car, remembered thinking that one day, people would drive around in the air instead of on the ground.

A frission of excitement ran through him, and he eyed the car covetously. “It flies?” he demanded. “F’real?”

“For real,” Tony agreed. “Bucky, meet Fiona. Fiona, Bucky.”

Bucky barked out a surprised laugh. “Fiona? Like in Shrek?” he asked, eyeing the emerald green paint job a little more appreciatively.

“Yeah,” Tony smirked. “I knew you were a nerd. And I’m pretty sure Bruce wouldn’t have appreciated it if I’d named her Hulkette.”

Bucky snorted. “Says you,” he said, even as he approached the car, reaching out to touch her with his flesh hand, feeling the smooth coolness of her. “She’s beautiful,” he breathed.

“She’s yours,” Tony said, and Bucky reared back, startled. Tony waggled his eyebrows. “Do you want to take her out for a spin? She handles beautifully, I tested her myself.”

Bucky swallowed hard, then turned back to look at the car. “I….can I?” he asked, pressing his metal hand to Fiona’s hood. “C’n I really?” He wouldn’t say it was quite a dream come true, because it wasn’t anything he’d dreamed he’d get to do, ever. He was just a boy from Brooklyn, a soldier, a POW, a weapon. He wasn’t….he wasn’t a futurist, or a genius, someone who saw the future and what it could be, rather than the present and what it _was_.

“Go ahead,” Tony encouraged.

Bucky didn’t know what he’d done in a past life to have earned this, but he wasn’t about to ask again. He didn’t even bother to open the door, just hopped over it and settled behind the wheel, his right hand reaching up and snagging the key out of the air without looking as Tony tossed it to him. The engine started up with a purr, and Bucky took a quick look at the controls. He was pretty sure he could figure it out on the fly. But really, why bother when there was an easier way?

He slid his eyes up to the man standing in the middle of the workshop. “Well?” he drawled. “You comin’ or what? I wanna see everything this baby can do.”

Tony’s laughter was worth more to Bucky than any dream.

“Sure, let’s take her for a ride. And then we’ll save the world,” Tony agreed. Because the world would always need protection, and Tony Stark was the man for the job.

Bucky chuckled. He had a second chance, and like hell he was giving it up. The reality was so much better than the dreams had ever been.

A whole new world awaited. A new future, heralded by the man at his side.

Bucky couldn’t wait.


End file.
